Keynote and Plenary Speakers

Jannis Androutsopoulos (Universität Hamburg)

Jannis Androutsopoulos is professor in German and media linguistics at the University of Hamburg, and currently adjunct professor at MultiLing Centre of Excellence, University of Oslo. His research sits at the interface of sociolinguistics and media discourse and explores linguistic heterogeneity and stylistic practice with a focus on the relationship between interaction and technology and the dynamics of sociolinguistic change. He is editor of Mediatization and sociolinguistic change (2014 with de Guyter), co-editor of Digital language practices in superdiversity (2014, Special Issue, Discourse, Context & Media), and guest-editor of Digital language and literacies: practices, awareness, and pedagogy (Special Issue, Linguistic & Education, forthcoming)

Tobias Blanke (King’s College London) 

Tobias Blanke is a Professor in Social and Cultural Informatics in the Department of Digital Humanities and current Head of Department. Tobias’ academic background is in philosophy and computer science. Before joining King’s, he held various positions in the digital industries. His particular research expertise is big data from heterogeneous social and cultural collections as well as the social shaping of technologies. Tobias works on several international projects and committees and in particular led on the research and development work of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure.

Dana Diminescu (Télécom ParisTech)
Dana Diminescu is Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in sociology at Télécom ParisTech engineering school. At present she is director of DiasporasLab and member of the Cultural Analytics programm at IPAM/UCLA .She is known for her work on the “connected migrant”, (her empirical work enabled her to approach varied fields ranging from uses of mobile phone and voice IT, Internet, m-transactions by migrants in a variety of transnational and local use situations: mobility and mobilisation, integration strategies, cross-bordering, web diasporas, ethnic business, migration lifecycles) and for a number of epistemological and methodological innovations in her research, questioning classical theories in migration studies. In particular, she designed and co-ordinated the e-Diasporas Atlas project, which was first runner up of its category for the 2012 Digital Humanities Awards.

www.e-diasporas.fr

Alexandra Georgakopoulou (King’s College London)
 Alex Georgakopoulou is Professor of Discourse Analysis & Sociolinguistics, King’s College London. She has developed small stories research, a paradigm for studying identities in everyday life stories. Her latest study of small stories on social media has been carried out within the ERC project ‘Life-writing of the moment: The sharing and updating self on social media’ (www.ego-media.org).She is currently completing a monograph on ‘Quantified Stories: A narrative analysis of metrics on social media’ (with Stefan Iversen & Carsten Stage, Palgrave) and the editing (with Anna De Fina) of the CUP Handbook of Discourse Studies.

 

Agnieszka Lyons (Queen Mary, University of London)
Agnieszka Lyons is lecturer in applied linguistics at Queen Mary University of London, UK. Her research employs multimodal and mediated discourse analytic as well as ethnographic approaches to explore the discursive construction of embodied identity in polycentric migrant environments. She has published in the Journal of Pragmatics and Social Semiotics, among others.
Mirca Madianou (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Mirca Madianou is Reader in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London where she works on the social uses of communication technologies in a transnational and comparative context. Her research focuses on migration and humanitarian emergencies and their intersection with digital technology.  She has directed two ESRC grants: Humanitarian Technologies [link: www.humanitariantechnologies.net ] and Migration, ICTS and transnational families [ link: http://www.researchcatalogue.esrc.ac.uk/grants/RES-000-22-2266/read ] which have led to several publications on the social consequences of new communication technologies among marginalised and migrant populations. Her current project investigates the role of digital innovation and data in the humanitarian sector. She is the author of Mediating the Nation: News, Audiences and the Politics of Identity and Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia (with D. Miller) as well as editor of Ethics of Media (with N. Couldry and A. Pinchevski).
Sandra Ponzanesi (Utrecht University)
Sandra Ponzanesi is Full Professor of Gender and Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is currently project leader of the ERC consolidator grant project “Digital Crossings in Europe: Gender, Diaspora and Belonging” CONNECTINGEUROPE. 

Among her recent publications are: Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe (2018), Postcolonial Transitions in Europe (2016), The Postcolonial Cultural Industry (2014), Gender, Globalisation and Violence (2014) and Postcolonial Cinema Studies (2012),

Roopika Risam (Salem State University)
Roopika Risam is an Assistant Professor of English and the Faculty Fellow for Digital Library Initiatives at Salem State University, where she also serves as Coordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies, Coordinator of the Combined B.A./M.Ed. in English Education, and Interim Coordinator of the M.A. in English. Her research interests lie at the intersections of postcolonial and African diaspora studies, humanities knowledge infrastructures, digital humanities, and new media. Her first monograph, New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2018. She is co-editing two volumes: Intersectionality in Digital Humanities with Barbara Bordalejo for Arc Humanities Press and The Digital Black Atlantic with Kelly Baker Josephs for the Debates in the Digital Humanities series (University of Minnesota Press). Along with Carol Stabile, she is co-director of Reanimate, an intersectional feminist publishing collective recovering archival writing by women in media activism. Currently, she is co-chair of the Association for Computers and the Humanities 2019 conference. Additionally, she recently received the Massachusetts Library Association’s Civil Liberties Champion Award for her work promoting equity and justice in the digital cultural record. 
Caroline Tagg (The Open University)
Caroline Tagg is lecturer in applied linguistics at the Open University, UK. Her research into language and digital technologies rests on the understanding that digital communication practices are deeply embedded into individuals’ wider social, economic and political lives. She is author of The Discourse of Text Messaging (2012) and Taking Offence on Social Media (with Philip Seargeant and Amy Aisha Brown, 2017).
Funda Ustek-Spilda (London School of Economics/Goldsmiths)
Funda Ustek-Spilda is a Research Officer at Department of Media and Communications and London School of Economics. She is currently working on a EU Project (Horizon 2020) titled Virt-EU: Values and Ethics in Innovation for Responsible Technology in Europe. She was previously a post-doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London on the ERC Project ARITHMUS: How data make a people. She holds a doctorate in Sociology and master’s in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford. 
Janet Zmroczek (British Library)
Janet Zmroczek is Head of European and Americas Collections at the British Library. Her research interests include the cultural and social life of the Polish community in the UK in the 19th century and the representation of this community in British contemporary publications